The tiny bedroom where they spent their last hours does not exactly look like a terrorist hideout. From their window, the two Dutch tourists had a serene view of Dal Lake, Kashmir's most famous tourist attraction.

They slipped out of the side of their scruffy houseboat last Sunday morning and headed in the freezing gloom into town. It was 7.15am.

What happened next is still not entirely clear. But within minutes of setting off Indian soldiers had shot Bakiowli Ahmad and Hassnowi Khaliq dead. The Indian army claims that the two Dutch nationals - who were Muslims of Moroccan origin - had tried to attack an army post with knives.

"The duo attacked our boys deliberately and without any provocation whatsoever," GS Gill, a senior Indian army official, insisted last week. Two of his officers were badly injured, he said.

But few people in Srinagar, the troubled summer capital of Indian-controlled Kashmir, accept the army's version of events. They have good reason not to. Since the insurgency against Indian rule in Kashmir began in 1989, Indian security forces have shot dead plenty of other people like the two hapless tourists in what are euphemistically described as "encounters".

The killings occur so routinely they have become, in the words of one human rights activist, "non-events". Successive Indian governments have responded to the lengthy revolt in the country's only Muslim-dominated state with utter ruthlessness (a tactic that worked against Sikh separatists in the Punjab, but has produced disappointing results in Kashmir).

Some of the army's many targets were undoubtedly involved in militancy. But others - like the unfortunate Hassnowi and Bakiowli - appear merely to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"If this is happening to Dutch passport holders imagine what is happening to ordinary Kashmiris?" Hashim Quershi, the leader of the separatist Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, pointed out. "The security forces in Kashmir are not disciplined," he lamented.

The Indian army has yet to explain why these two undoubtedly pious young men, who borrowed a prayer mat from a neighbour and refused to eat eggs for breakfast, came up with a plan of such startling ineptitude.

If they were members of Al-Qaida, as was originally suggested, why would they attack a fortified army post with a knife? Both young men had communicated on an Islamist internet website back in Holland; proof, the army feels, of their guilt. And no one is quite sure why the tourists decided to visit Kashmir in the first place, disappearing from their homes last month.

The present military stand-off between India and Pakistan has focused new attention on Kashmir, and prompted the US secretary of state, Colin Powell, to visit Delhi for talks last week with India's elderly prime minister, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Mr Powell flew into India fresh from a meeting with Pakistan's military ruler, General Pervez Musharraf.

But, prior to recent efforts by both the Americans and Tony Blair to reduce tensions on the subcontinent, the Himalayan state had rather fallen off the world's map. Both India and Pakistan - who have fought two wars over the disputed territory - are to blame for the mess. Until Gen Musharraf's dramatic recent crackdown on religious extremism, Pakistan has covertly supported Islamist militants who have been fighting Indian rule in Jammu and Kashmir.

Since September 11, India has been increasingly successful in drawing attention to its own "terrorist" problem in the state, which it blames on Pakistan-backed militants. But India's own record in Kashmir is a pretty dismal one. And its recent rhetoric ignores the fact that many young militants emerge from the backward villages of Kashmir itself, and not just from Pakistan.

The Indian government's brutal counter-insurgency policy has hardly helped, leading to the complete alienation of most ordinary Kashmiris, who cherish the idea of independence from both New Delhi and Islamabad. "The deaths of the Dutch tourists demonstrates the mind set of the security forces here," Parvez Imroz, a human rights lawyer in Srinagar, said. "The Indian army has got used to killing because it is allowed to act with impunity."

Mr Imroz has compiled a list of 5,000 Kashmiris who have "disappeared" since the revolt against New Delhi began. (Indian officials in Srinagar claim those who have vanished are not dead and have merely decamped to Paksitan.)

He has demanded an end to deaths in custody - a commonplace occurrence; the punishment of army officers who shoot innocent people; and compensation for the relatives of Kashmiris who have vanished. Mr Imroz recognises he has no chance of success. This is because of India's Army Act, which makes extra-judicial killing perfectly legal; the country's "jingoistic" media, which rarely runs stories critical of the Indian army's behaviour in Kashmir; and its "committed" judges, he says.

Heavy snowfall last week has compounded the state's already acute sense of isolation, made worse by the severing of all internet facilities and international phone lines just before Christmas. "We have been plunged further into the abyss," one Kashmiri said.

The owner of the Happy New Year houseboat, meanwhile, where Bakiowli and Hassnowi were staying, was yesterday still trying to puzzle out why his guests were shot dead. "It is very strange," Amin Baktoo said. "They initially said they would stay only for three days but in the end decided to move in for a week. They were very nice young men.

"They were reading the Koran and praying in their room. They also visited the mosque and went jogging. For us they were definitely not militants, merely tourists."

Some sources suggest that the Indian soldiers mistook one of the Dutch men for a woman, and started taunting him. There was an altercation, and the soldiers then opened fire. The tourists' bodies - dressed in jeans and pullovers - were filmed minutes later as they lay steaming on the cold ground.

The Dutch embassy in New Delhi is demanding a full explanation as to why their nationals were bumped off. But in Kashmir there are no empirical answers and few facts; only snow and fog.

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